by Julie Bellian
No point being squeamish. If you eat meat, someone kills it for you.
Do you buy turkey, beef, lamb, chicken or pork from Powell River farms?
Well, you’ll have to kill it yourself, come September.
New laws prohibit the sale of any meat slaughtered on farm and Powell River has no licensed abattoir or slaughter house in the region.
I wanted to have a slaughtering demonstration at the Fall Fair but people thought I was being morbid.
I want to have a display showing how vegetables grow in dirt, not plastic bags.
I want to show you how free-range chickens will gobble up maggots or carpenter ants, whatever you like….
I still want to tell you the food you’re eating comes from the flesh and udders of animals (vegans excepted).
Why am I saying this?
To get your attention.
Farmers feed you. Land feeds you. Animals feed you. Supermarkets do not make food. The farmer has been doing the dirty work for you.
And fighting for your right to healthy food.
Now we are told to go be criminals.
Are you going to wait until it has all vanished? Powell River Dairies? Already gone. Raw milk? Illegal. Local meat? Soon to be outlawed. Farm eggs? Days are numbered. Agricultural Land? What the hell, who needs 2% saved for farming, let’s build monster homes in Wildwood.
Better make friends with your local farmers.
Or grow your own.
Or settle for a future of “meat-extenders” and other corporate food miracles.
But if you want fresh, healthy, real food, you might find yourself running around like a chicken with its head cut off.
by Julie Bellian
B.C. had an idea. Look into the future, picture B.C. torn up, congested, covered with vinyl, and riddled with sewage systems. Put aside lands for farming, in anticipation of this mess. Call it the Agricultural Land Reserve and keep it protected for food production, just as Parks are protected for our common use.
City Council is telling the Province that Powell River prefers to see an international airport for jet-setters, a plastics factory, and gated community for rich out-of-towners on these lands.
Snow peas from China grown in human excrement, anyone?
Food prices in stores will soar as fuel & ferry prices soar. Peak oil & climate change will end our apparent glut of cheap food. This abundance is artificially boosted by oppressive systems the world over. Canada, get your head out of the sand.
Have you noticed? Organic food… Farmer’s Markets… “Eat Local” – it’s all the rage elsewhere, especially among urbanites, as if it were just invented. Powell River, you have been doing it for 20 years! You are the first GE free crop area in Canada! Famous outside of Powell River! Let’s increase local farming, not discard it.
Besides—mass-produced food is crap. Do you mind pus, chemicals and drugs in your milk, meat & cheese? Watch factory food being ‘cooked’ and you’ll see where pimples come from.
Recipe for cancer? Read a few labels.
Powell River, stand up for the lands and for local food & farming.
by Julie Bellian
Farming is dreadfully un-hip. Even the way I put it sounds gormless. Farming suffers from a low-status image. Who, these days, will ever be enticed to take on such an un-cool identity as ‘farmer’? As a ‘career’ it is beyond unpopular. Yet people supposedly want what the traditional farmer produces—fresh, naturally grown, local food. So who will grow it if no one wants to be a farmer?
Why such an uncomplimentary stereotype—especially here, where you can meet the grower of your food, and where the health and socio-economic benefits of local farming are apparent by the fact that our region is not dominated by agri-business. Eating local is all the rage in cities: nothing is finer than feta cheese and blackberry vinaigrette on baby salad greens. But to say you have to go home to your goats puts you in a class of dubious glamour.
This community has a vision and many agricultural achievements: our GE–free Crop Area Declaration, seed-saving initiatives, food sovereignty & charter work, markets, preserving Agricultural Lands, opposing restrictions on selling local meat. I can talk until the cows come home, but the question remains: who wants to be a farmer?
This page invites you to join any of these local food activities however you want. Plant experimental food plants in the new demonstration garden at the Open Air Market, grow your own variety in the Living Seed Bank, bring your canning and fall harvest to sell at the winter markets, or hold hands-on workshops that our organizations can sponsor. It all adds up to more local food.
I am inviting discussion about local food & farming. Ideas for making it ‘fashionable’ would help. But we have to get our hands in the dirt and do it.
Julie Bellian is Coordinator of the Powell River Open Air Market